


Sinned and Redeemed

by StarkWolf



Series: JB Week 2020 | Sinned and Redeemed [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: And his voice constantly alludes to it while he is in denial, But Not too much TV Canon coz its harmful, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, I did it coz I did it there is no turning back now, I have used the word Proud overzealously, Idiots in Love, JB Week 2020, Jaime Lannister falls in lust at first sight of Brienne of Tarth, Jaime's Hand Injury Canon Verse, Sexism Mentioned, Shameless Mix of Book & TV Canon, Short & hopefully sweet, Strong Language, TW: Mention of Past Trauma, This fic is unbeta'ed, Workplace harrasment, Yes my life choices are the worst, canon typical sexism, i wrote this today, this is fluffy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:01:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26701849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarkWolf/pseuds/StarkWolf
Summary: JB Week Day 4 | Sins & Virtues | Sloth & DiligenceCersei is a sloth.The one where Brienne and Jaime are co-workers in an ad agency.
Relationships: (blink and you miss that minor), Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Series: JB Week 2020 | Sinned and Redeemed [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2061042
Comments: 83
Kudos: 175
Collections: Jaime x Brienne Week 2020





	1. A Pride of Lions

**Author's Note:**

> Day 1: Pride & Humility

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime Lannister was a proud man. Or was he?
> 
> JB Week 2020 Sins & Virtues l Day 1: Pride & Humility

There is something in the way her shoulders _( manly, broad, oafish, repulsive_ shoulders) are set.

Stubbornness, he presumes. Why does it feel like pride? What does a lumbering beast of a swordswench know of pride? What business does she have to be proud of in front of the Lion of Lannister?

Jaime became proud of himself even before he became a man.

He was born the same, as all Lannisters are, squalling, red-faced, gilded and proud, dwarf or not.

He has seen it in the patronizing, disdainful gaze of Tywin Lannister every time anyone else ( _even his children_ ) uttered a word more than necessary in his presence.

He has seen it in the haughty tilt of Cersei’s ( _Cersei, his love, his sister, his other half_ ) … Cersei’s chin long, long before she became queen.

Tyrion, his head high in defiance even under the crushing weight of his deformity.

He has felt it as he shoved the sword through Aerys’ back and the world spat a moniker at him. That too, he has worn with pride, as a badge of honor.

The Wench tugs at his chains as his thoughts slow him a bit down.

“Faster” she barks.

“Would that you could say that to me under different circumstances, mayhaps I would have closed my eyes and complied with your fervent urgency.”

She turns a particular shade of Lannister red and glares at him and he laughs.

“Bloody arrogant fool” she mutters and turns back and sets her shoulder square to that same position again.

It rattles the fuck out of him.

Lesser men refer to pride as arrogance, he supposes.

Later as the Wench disarms him, the rotten thought crosses his mind for a second that mayhaps he _is_ an arrogant fool, while the Wench is simply proud.

He doesn't have to wonder about it for too long, he doesn't get to, because Zollo’s arakh cuts whatever it is, pride, or arrogance out of him altogether.

……

 _“Bloody arrogant fool”_ the Wench had called him once, in another lifetime.

His life since then ( since _her_ ) has been a lesson in humility.

It was true, he supposes, for the first time in a long, long time he feels shameless pride coursing through his veins is when the Wench kneels down in front of him.

“In the Name of the Father I charge you to be just”

_In the name of love too, he doesn’t say._

…………

Their babe is born only red faced and squalling, freckles lined in the dip of her tiny, wobbling chin.

“The first of many” he tells the Wench, overjoyed and kisses her brow as tears run down his face openly. She is exhausted and fixes him with a scowl.

“How many times would you have me go through _that_?” she motions at the bloody mess under her.

“Till we have a pride of lions.”

_Or as many children, as you wish, My Lady, as proud as you, and as modest as me._


	2. One of a Kind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime’s wife, well almost ex-wife, was an infuriating woman. 
> 
> Modern AU where Jaime and Brienne are getting divorced but they are attending the same event where Brienne in a short dress and on Robb Stark's arm while Jaime is in denial.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah so again I did this today. All mistakes are mine. This is also my first modern AU. Do feel free to tell me what you think of it. 
> 
> P.S. - Thank you for the love on the first ficlet. I intended to keep this short as well but it clearly went out of my hand.

_Jaime’s wife, well almost ex-wife, was an infuriating woman._

There was a saying in the business world, when the mighty corporate baddy Tywin Lannister commands something done, it was done, and seemingly his children were no exception to it.

It has helped him at times, though to what measure he wasn’t entirely sure, as charmed as everyone pretended to be at the sight of the barely there condescending smirk plastered to his face, they still spat “bloody murderer” behind his back.

But then of course, there was this age old financial agreement with the Tarths, who Jaime had never seen in his life because they liked to spend their days lounging in their godforsaken, out of the fucking map, end of the fucking world island, and Tywin, desperate to keep those shares in the family brokered a marriage deal with Selwyn and he got married to his beast of a daughter, with her crooked teeth and plump lips and fucking long legs which he could now get a good look at while nursing his regular scotch on the rocks from the sidebar of this gods damned Stark gala, while his wife, almost ex wife, strode across the hall, arm in arm with the scum Robb Stark, who of course had everything in his short yet stellar career going for him, including a spotless reputation which he supposes would make her swoon in ways Jaime never has, who was a good arm shorter than her with those awful heels she was wearing, but pretty enough for her nonetheless, surely, what with his auburn hair and Tully blue eyes.

_Jaime’s almost ex- wife was hell to put up with._

The day Jaime married her was the worst day of his life, well, he at least thought so. Then he lost his hand in an accident two months later.

As much of a shipwreck as their marital life has been then, and as much as she had amused him with her uptight and righteous worldviews and her honest, no nonsense demeanor, he was truly enraged by her sheer nonplussed attitude when it came to him and the faint judgmental distaste she ( _she!_ ) directed at him ( _him!_ ) no matter what disgraceful insult he hurled at her.

Then of course Tyrion ( _fucking traitor!_ ) adored her and made her laugh and shared private jokes with her that would light up her round, big, calm, blue, blue, blue eyes ( the most beautiful eyes he has ever seen really ) while Tywin nodded curtly at her in approval when she suggested changes in the company’s legal policies even when she continued working with the Starks.

Tywin’s children had been waiting for that nod of head for their entire lives.

He envied her. He loathed her. Every bit of her 6 feet tall (and presumably equally broad) upstanding, ethical, honest to the core, moral and principled body.

_Because Jaime’s almost ex-wife was a maddening woman._

She didn’t have one malicious bone in her body and was all the more awful for it. Even with the way he had treated her, she had stayed at his side in the hospital for five days straight, when all his father did was visit once and give his mangled arm a displeased and unpalatable look ( _he wasn’t surprised, even he couldn’t look at the mess it was_ ) and the love of his life didn’t even deem his accident worthy enough for a visit, perhaps Cersei was as revolted by the thought of it as he was at the sight of it.

But there she was, his wife.

Talking to the doctors, holding his other hand while the doctors did whatever fucking painful thing they did to his amputated stump, urging him to eat and bathe and ensuring he takes his medications and looking at his stump with empathy and not sympathy and without a trace of pity or disgust and fucking running her long, pale fingers through his hair when he couldn’t sleep _( seriously, who does that??_ ) , too afraid of the nightmares.

He has slept when she had done that. She hadn’t.

His wife was objectively ugly, and five days of staying constantly awake and aware had wreaked havoc on her already compromised features, but then she turned to look at him on the sixth day when the doctors said that he can go home with _those eyes_ and a ghost of a smile on her exhausted face, and Jaime couldn’t stand the sight of it as tears stung his eyes, and he couldn’t fucking look away.

It was a strange dilemma.

It was completely nerve-wracking and devastating at first, wanting assistance for every single thing, from undoing the laces of his super expensive PJs to holding a pen to having his steak. He was bitter and foul mouthed and constantly angry at himself and lashed out to all the nurses and the servants and the assistants and the physiotherapist and the therapist, but that hardly deterred his wife from being patient and gentle and reassuring with him and getting him to do it all. It went on for months. _Months!_

Then, Tywin visited their house to rain on his mental progress with a warning on his lips to get his prosthetic done for a dinner with the Baratheons when the entire medical retinue of reputed doctors had advised against it and his hand was far from healing and there was so much, so fucking much pain that the thought of a tiny friction filled him with dread and he sat there silent and helpless until his wife stood up to his father ( _literally stood up_ _towering over his father, tall and oh! so glorious, blazing with righteous indignation_ ) and called him out for being an abusive, violent, self absorbed, ego maniac of a parent, threw his averseness to the well being of his son at his face and threatened him with legal implications if he didn’t leave the perimeters of their house then and there.

Tywin’s eyes flashed with fury and what Jaime believed was a tiny twinge of guilt but he was nothing, _nothing_ but a sad imitation of a simpering lion with his tails between his legs as he left the house.

Later that night as she was redoing the dressing on his wounds ( as she did on all nights even though he believed he had hired at least three people to look after it ) with her large, warm and calloused yet unreasonably soft hands, he spilled out all his truths to her, from their mother’s passing to Tyrion’s mistreatment to how Aerys had planned to blow up the office for insurance money and how he had saved hundreds at Targ King Corps even though they had to lose their jobs and everyone hated him for it because Rhaegar bought his silence from his father with whatever money the family had left and in exchange for a clean chit on the police record from him.

Well, everything except Cersei.

She had held him through it, first shocked, then aghast, then so compassionate as she cradled his face and wiped his tears like he was a gods damned child so of course he had to let her know he wasn’t one and he kissed her and she kissed him back and they tumbled on to bed together and whatever it was, it was nothing like anything he had ever experienced.

_Jaime’s almost ex wife was technically an unattractive woman._

But there was no part of her that failed to arouse him consistently.

So he sought her out through the following weeks and kissed her whenever he could and touched her wherever he could, palmed her meager breasts, palmed her cunt, licked it, sucked on it and coaxed out his name out of her as she fell apart, and he himself fell apart inside her repeatedly, and caressed the hollow of her neck, nudged the soft flesh behind her ears and coaxed out his name out of her mouth again and again and again and coaxed out gentle words, her dreams, her ambitions, stories of her childhood and let it consume him whole as he stared in awe at the magnificent woman in his life, on his bed, at their home.

He went to the Baratheon dinner, her hand in his good one, his stump only dressed without any prosthetic, and a smile on his lips.

He came out alone, the smile long gone, his marriage broken apart.

Whatever venom Cersei spat when she cornered him, she had made sure after all, that his wife heard.

She left their home. And he was so enraged at her for leaving him, abandoning him without giving him a chance to explain that he packed a few of his clothes and muttered good riddance and went to Tyrion’s and crashed on his couch.

He muttered good riddance once again and good that the annoying woman finally saw sense and left him and how he never wanted this marriage and how free and happy he was to his brother who looked at him with such intense pity and he hated it and he loathed it so he drank as much as he could and passed out and woke up and drank and passed out again.

He considered going back to Cersei’s bed after all. She was the love of his life, so on the third day he put on a tailored trouser with much difficulty, got on his car, and drove to where his wife lived now and parked his car on the opposite side, put his head on the steering and watched her windows till the lights went off and went back to Tyrion’s. This routine repeated itself four times till Tyrion shoved the invitation of the Stark gala on his palms while he stared at the women gyrating to a jarring beat on the TV.

And here he was now, somewhere between his seventh and twenty-third Scotch on the rocks, looking at his wife steadily avoiding him and his gaze, mingling with the people ( _oh! She hates socializing as much as he does_ ) in that extremely short blue dress, pale, white legs peppered with freckles that went on for miles, sharing a laugh with Oberyn Martell, while Robb Stark whispered something in her ears, and two other lumbering men (definitely from Stark Inc.) who looked like uncivilized brutes leered at her legs.

_Why the fuck was he here again?_

He downed another one of his Scotch, at least he has robbed the Starks of their most expensive whiskey, he placated himself.

No. This has to be over now. He will walk over to Brienne, ( _She likes this shirt on him, button down_ ) , give her a fucking piece of his mind, never see her again until either of them files for divorce, and end this once and for all.

His mind conjured up all the hurtful things that he could say to her, ensure she never thinks of him, of _them_ ever again with any longing or wistfulness.

Satisfied with himself after he has composed a speech that starts by insulting her looks first and ends with a particularly cruel laugh and a “Fuck you. See you never.” , he hopped on from the bar stool, stumbled upon the floor, composed himself, strode to her, took her by her arms and led her to the artfully decorated yet disturbingly multiple mirror ridden washroom of the gallery, bolted the door and then placed her against it.

“What the hell are you doing?” she gritted under her teeth, furious and ready to kill him.

_Now, was his time to strike._

But of course, of fucking course, his mouth and mind and words betrayed him at the sight of those eyes, rendering him immobile.

He gave her a once over and addled by the booze as he was, his arousal made itself felt very evidently. Some dam inside him broke. Everything happened all at once.

“ _Brienne_ ” he managed to croak out, “ _Come home_.”

She stared at him.

“Please!”

_Why the fuck did he sound on the verge of tears?_

“I am so sorry. I should have told you but I thought you would leave me if you knew I had a sexual relationship with my own cousin. And then you did and I can’t… I can’t. I can’t live without you. Brienne. Please. Forgive me. Take me back. I have never been unfaithful to you. And I will never be. I promise.”

_He was definitely weeping now._

Brienne’s eyes shone with tears as well, if it was any consolation. ( _It wasn’t_ )

“You lied to me.”

“I didn’t have the guts to tell you. You already hated me before, and then you didn’t and I couldn’t bring myself to bear your hatred again.”

“I never hated you.” Her voice was small. Quiet.

“Now you do.”

“No!”

“I just… I just knew this had to end. Look at you. And look at me. Someone like you could never… never.. with someone like me. And it did.” Brienne said.

He lost track of the conversation altogether. What the hell was she on about?

“She is very beautiful. I don’t blame you. For wanting her.”

_Oh. Oh!_

_He had forgotten, Jaime’s wife was also a stubborn fool._

“I only want you. I only love you. Take me back to your bed and let me show you how fucking much I want you. Take me back into your life and let me show you how much I love you. All I have ever wanted since you walked into my life in that awfully hot pantsuit was _you_. ” Jaime’s voice caught in his throat as the honesty of the confession chafed his voice but what was needed to be said had to be said.

It must have not been that bad because the next thing he knew was Brienne’s mouth on his and her hands in his hair and her body pressed flush against his and a whiff of her scent and _Brienne, Brienne, Brienne, infuriating, maddening, glorious, stubborn, foolish, and so damn awesome._

They came up for air after some time, chests heaving in unison.

Jaime must be a very self-controlled and composed man, to not fuck the brains out of her right there, at the sight of her, flushed red and panting.

“That dress though” he managed to stutter.

“It’s horrible isn’t it?” she tugged at the hemline, suddenly self-conscious and eyes downcast.

“Horribly distracting, if that is what you mean. I would dream of you in this dress for a month, and dream of ways I can take you while you are in it, or dream of getting you out of it in a thousand different ways… It is…”

She kissed him again to stop his filthy mouth and filthier imaginations from running ahead. It was a widely appreciated and successful technique.

“Shut up. And let’s get out of here.” She chided him.

Of course, she would take him back to their home.

_Jaime’s wife was a kind woman, and also, one of a kind._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As per usual
> 
> 1\. Forgive me for my mistakes, this fic was written and put up in three hours. Unbeta'ed.  
> 2\. English is not my first language.


	3. Waiting For You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hell hath no fury like a Lannister scorned.
> 
> JB Week 2020 Day 3: Wrath & Patience

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was incredibly difficult to come up with this. Just wasn't in a creative space of mind today.  
> Hence tried to keep it as short as possible.  
> Hope it's not too disappointing.   
> Also, Thank you for the love you all have shown me so far. It's deeply encouraging.

_Hell hath no fury like a Lannister scorned._

When Tywin Lannister felt affronted, he wiped out an entire house of its existence.

Then he went ahead and got a song written out of it.

_Years later, another Lannister, his own son ( always his son ), put a crossbow through him, raging against a lifetime of injustice and humiliation._

They pelted stones and filth at Cersei, shamed her on the streets of Kings Landing.

_Cersei’s wrath was the green of a forest, green of her eyes, green of wildfire._

And Jaime?

All Jaime did, shaking and trembling in outrage, was warn the outlaws of Stoneheart in a low voice, _“Touch my Wench, and you will die.”_  
  
 _They tried. They died._

………

All his life Jaime Lannister was asked to wait.

He waited (his breath held tight in his chest in dread when he couldn’t finish his lessons and Tywin Lannister barged through the door, whip in hand ).

And waited ( for a moment alone with Cersei for days, years, decades )

And waited ( for Tyrion to confess he is lying to hurt him, no Cersei hasn't been unfaithful to him! )  
  
And waited ( for Aerys to stop screaming, for someone to come claim the bloody throne, for the threat to emerge from his bad side at the battlefield, for secrets to be ousted, for _someone, anyone_ come to his rescue when he was rotting in his own piss, for the arakh to come down fast and swift, for the nightmare to end… )

_And waited and waited and waited._

_“Jaime wait!”_

The Wench calls him just as he is about to march out into the Long Night.

It’s fucking cold. His balls are freezing off. It’s their last night on the earth. Dead people are on their door.

_Also, he hates waiting.  
  
_

She presses her lips to his own, rough and warm.

  
 _Patience has never tasted sweeter_ , he thinks, after a lifetime of waiting to no absolution.

_For her, he will wait a lifetime more._


	4. Lounging in Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> JB Week Day 4 | Sins & Virtues | Sloth & Diligence
> 
> Cersei is a sloth.  
> The one where Brienne and Jaime are co-workers in an ad agency.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is for Tarthiana, who is awesome and kind and the coolest and also generously offered me a read through for this fic and gave her valuable opinion to me at extremely short notice. Thank you so much. Also extending this note of gratitude towards aliveanddrunkonsunlight who just asked me to have fun and here we are and the good people back home who not only cleared my doubts over issues I had while drafting this fic but also uplifted my mood. Thank you. I have never been more proud of being a part of a fandom such as this. 
> 
> ❤️
> 
> As per usual, all mistakes are mine.

“Cersei is a fucking sloth. Just… just get her out of my bed before she wreaks havoc in my fucking apartment!” Brienne overhears Jaime Lannister yelling on the phone just outside the boardroom.

Not that Jaime Lannister had any sort of good reputation going for him, but the least that could be said about him was that he was not an active misogynist who reveled in “showing women their places” over everyday activities like Wagstaff and she had caught him rebuking Bronn and Tyrion severely over their crass objectification of Sansa and Marg all the time.

Though, it needs to be said that he did crack the generic “Are you a woman?” line at the first sight of her and went ahead to make multiple offensive comments about her sex life, but not even the infuriatingly handsome face of his could deter her from calling him out on his behavior on the very first day at work.

Brienne, being an ugly, towering, broad framed, muscled 6 feet 3 inches ( masculine, is the word they use, but Brienne had navigated through enough gender role based crisis throughout her life and actively shoved that word out of her mind when describing herself even in her own head ) tall woman in a man’s world invited a plethora of sexist comments on her wake wherever she went from when she was a child, so by the time she walked into Wolf’s Den she had stopped apologizing for the amount of space she takes up in a room and giving the men in it any satisfaction even though her self confidence was a long way from recovering from the blows.

And she had stood head to head and toe to toe with Jaime, even him being over 7 years senior in the advertising industry and holding a higher designation than hers and demanded that either he can come up with a heartfelt apology or stand there and google power harassment while she has a talk with Catelyn to ensure that not only shall he be fired but also named and shamed publicly.

The result was satisfactory, he had backed down, though his eyes shone with resentment and something else Brienne couldn’t exactly name, and apologized for making “unworthy comments”.

_And that was that, except, that it wasn’t._

Their bickering continued, though it wasn’t ( thankfully ) on topics like basic human rights or feminism or racism ( Jaime was very vocal about calling shit out on all of the issues, surprisingly for a privileged brat like him ) and out of their strange, animosity ridden dynamic came out the best of campaigns so much so that they were fucking teamed up for every new pitch and people started calling them “The Lovers” because clearly there are very few people here who understood what professional boundary entailed. It also got her a promotion to Jaime’s rank. Well, they were a good team, this much Brienne can begrudgingly admit. Jaime’s innovative, chaotic, out of the box ideas were balanced and morphed to a practical execution by Brienne, who was nothing if not diligent at her job. 

_And that was that, except, that it wasn’t._

The joke, obviously stretched too far when they fucking hung a _mistletoe_ above them at the Annual Christmas party. Well, to be fair to her co-worker-friends, they didn’t actually hang a mobile mistletoe that followed Jaime and her throughout the office. What happened was that the weeks leading up to that were weird, and as much as they argued, Jaime and Brienne had also developed a begrudging respect for each other when it came to work, they started texting at odd moments, and more than once the conversation slipped into personal territory. And Brienne realized with a horror that she liked this dynamic that they shared.

Something else happened as well, as aware as Brienne was of Jaime’s unfair and obscenely excessive handsomeness, it came to a point that his golden hair, razor-sharp jaw, cutting smile and dazzling eyes started to make cameos in her thoughts. And then, there was that day, when it was late at night and they were working on an all-night shift and Connington passed by to pass a disgustingly insensitive and offensive comment on Brienne and before she could react Jaime shot up from his own desk, walked over and punched him right on his smug face.

It wasn’t the first time Connington was up to these antics, even after being at the receiving end of severe tongue lashing sessions and subsequently enough feigned nonchalance and ignorance from Brienne. She had also considered going to Catelyn herself but there was this history with him which Brienne was still too traumatized with, and she didn’t think she was in a safe space to talk about it till then.

When both of them were called in by Catelyn the next day, Jaime offered to put forward his resignation and pulled off a passionate speech on the systemic harassment Brienne had to face at work every day and if this was the price he had to pay to ensure that assholes like Wagstaff and Connington didn’t pollute the workspace then he was okay with it.

Catelyn obviously flustered red at it, apologized profusely to Brienne to let such elements foster in the professional environment and fired the assholes instead citing severe workspace violations.

Everyone knew Connington and Wagstaff were both cowards who wouldn’t push their luck with a legal discourse.  
  
Later that night, they got drunk on cheap Vodka from Tyrion’s secret stash in the smoke room after everyone left, and Jaime told her about Cersei and about the Dragons Inc scandal which gained Jaime the reputation of an unprofessional, untrustworthy jerk who leaked confidential and sensitive information to their competitors that cost Aerys the entire company. Turns out, Aerys, the chairman, had abused a series of female workers over years who were too afraid to call him out. So, they hatched a plan of revenge where they would leak the private documents of the company. The plan had one hole; there was no way the betrayal would not be tracked back to them resulting in an abrupt end to their professional careers. Aerys was influential enough to see it done. Jaime got wind of the plan and decided to take the fall for himself. Also being the heir to the Lannister empire, and his father’s son, he managed to walk out scot free from the trial that cost the Dragons their remaining fortune, but earned himself a bad reputation for life. After a tumultuous relationship and years at his father’s office, Jaime and Tyrion chose to show their old man a middle finger and walked out and joined Cat’s company.

By the time Brienne was back home in her bed, she was a little in love with Jaime Lannister.

That brings us to Christmas, and the miserable affair of the mistletoe. She did suspect the punch had a weird taste, more sour than fruity, and by the time they realized that Tyrion had gotten them all hammered, Sansa and Margaery were already shoving tongues down each other’s throats.

The alcohol had also loosened up Brienne enough to not be obsessively aware of Jaime’s arm around her shoulders throughout the evening as she should have been when sober and when Jaime was 5 feet apart, but also tantalizingly conscious of the heat of his mouth as he whispered amusing commentaries into her ears. So when they accidentally walked under the mistletoe and the rest of the office erupted in cheers, Brienne decided ( very conveniently, drunk as she was ) to shatter her killjoy reputation and go with it.

 _And. Well. Oh!_  
  
It was a kiss that was too short for Brienne’s liking and too long for Jaime to bring his hand around her waist and press her to himself for it to burn into her entire existence.

_And well, that was that, except it wasn’t._

By the time they were on a cab ride home, their tongues were shoved into each other’s throats not unlike Margaery and Sansa’s and then Brienne went on to have the most glorious sex of her life in her bed with Jaime fucking Lannister.

She woke up the next morning to Jaime’s hushed whispers on phone about Cersei, _Cersei_ , Jaime’s abusive ex-girlfriend who had cheated on him multiple times and whom Jaime considered to be the love of his life.  
  
_It shouldn’t have shattered her, except it did._

She pretended to fall asleep as Jaime showed himself out of the apartment stealthily. _Typical._

She blocked his number, took a two day holiday, and the next morning walked straight into the boardroom with a stony face, except that he was outside on the phone now, calling Cersei a sloth and talking about her in his bedroom.

Uncharacteristic as it is of Jaime to hurl such an insult at a woman, ( that too someone as far from a sloth as Cersei, Brienne had indulged in a bit of stalking Jaime Lannister’s ex lover a long time ago ) , she assumed that maybe she was terribly mistaken in all her assumptions, and after all he was that asshole who just calls women names behind their backs and slips out of women’s bed after a fun night like an uncouth.

So much for “ _There are no men like me!”_ she scoffed.

But of course it’s Jaime, who just cannot let anything run it’s due course so he sticks his head out into the room, and says,

“I ll take 5 minutes to join the meeting. Tarth, can I have a word with you for a moment?”

Suddenly all eyes were on her and as much as she would love to refuse him outright, the weird, conspiratorial attention that the room suddenly bestowed on her was harder to deal with, so she decided to get it over with.

“Where the fuck have you been? Why the fuck is your phone unreachable??” he was onto her even before they have stepped into the smoking room.

“I blocked you.” Brienne was never a person who beat about the bush.

Jaime had the fucking galls to look hurt at that.

“What? Blocked me?? Why?? I mean. Was it that bad for you?”

Brienne blinked.

“Are you this dense or are you just pretending to be this dense? You fucking crept out of my bed at night after a night of wild sex like I was some use and throw rag doll, not like I wanted you to make breakfast for me in bed but at least not hit and run to your ex-girlfriend like a coward. I deserve some courtesy. “ Brienne was fuming.

“What? Run to my ex-girlfriend? What??”

“Yes. Cersei, who apparently now is a fucking sloth, Seriously Jaime? What the hell is wrong with you? So much for having a savior complex, you cannot call a woman a sloth, no matter if she is your abusive ex”

Jaime’s eyes went big and his mouth opened much akin to the Pikachu emoji Brienne had seen doing rounds. Then he composed himself, narrowed his eyes at her, and said,

“Cersei is a cat. A cat who fucking lounges 17 hours a day and then gets bored of the lounging, so scratches expensive bedding and eats my shaving cream. That’s why I called her a sloth.”

Brienne was lost for a moment.

“Cersei is your ex.”

“Yes. My ex Cersei and I got a cat together.”

“Who is called Cersei?”

“She was a megalomaniac and a narcissist Brienne. I told you. She thought… the green of her eyes resembled hers, so she named her after herself.”

Brienne had heard a lot of ridiculous things in her life. But this was…

“Jaime.”

“Brienne. So I really loved Cers. The cat. But then, of course, when the break up happened and it got messy and of course she kept the cat and I couldn’t do anything about it, but then… then Addam called me that night when I was at yours and told me how she had gone off on a vacation with Robert and Cersei, I mean, the cat, was locked out of the apartment and Addam spotted him, thank the Gods he lives in the same complex, Addam spotted him outside and took him in and called me, I rushed out because I haven’t seen her for so long, and I loved her, so I had to leave and see her and then take her home because God knows what she had to bear for all these months with Cersei, my ex Cersei. I never wanted to leave the cat to her custody, but then she created a ruckus said all these thing about being her Mother and I was too broken myself to stand there and take more shit from her and left Cers to her only to find out that she had abandoned her to her fate. I am sorry. I should have told you. I called you so many times, then you didn’t come to work and I wanted to stop by your apartment but then I thought you… maybe…you didn’t want to be bothered. So…”

For all his talks about cats, he looked like a kicked puppy at that moment.

_Brienne loves puppies._

“I want to meet her, Cersei, _the cat_.” Brienne said.

Jaime broke into a relieved smile that dazzled the fuck out of her.

_And that was that, except it wasn’t._

…..

“Come back to bed” Jaime said.

So she did.

Cersei looked up from the comforter she was perched in at the movement, and then went on to roll on her back in a slow-paced, languorous, leisurely manner.

Maybe, Cersei got the right of it, maybe lounging all day wasn’t a bad idea at all, Brienne thought as she got under the covers and snuggled up to Jaime.

**Author's Note:**

> As you well understand by now if you have read it  
> 1\. This Fic is Unbeta'ed  
> 2\. English is not my First Language


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